Rock Bottom Café

If you’ve been in Dubai long enough to have frequented the original Rock Bottom Café, you’d have known what to expect when this TECOM branch of the popular bar opened last December. At first, we wondered whether this younger sibling could rival its predecessor’s infamous (and somewhat dubious) reputation, but nine months on, any ambiguity has long been silenced.

Turn up late on a Thursday or Friday night and you’ll likely find yourself joining a queue of chatty Dubaians – from the merry to the downright feral – as they wait, in a surprisingly orderly fashion, to be granted entry. On the inside, it’s an entirely different story. We’d bet some of the folk would gleefully trample over women and children (were there any great number of either in sight) to get to the bar and shake a fist full of hop-soaked notes at the overstretched staff. And either side of Ramadan, you’ll be lucky to make it across the dancefloor in any short period of time. A low-lying cloud of smoke hovers over the pool tables, while ladies selling short drinks wander between punters, and burly, black-clad bouncers eject any particularly unsavoury types.

Note to people-watchers: few such easily accessible venues provide so many laughs. Without doubt, RBC (and its crowd) lives up to the name – though we may roll our eyes at the goings-on here, we do so with the greatest affection.